Saturday, December 01, 2012

History of Meritage - Revisited

Still seems to be confusion about Meritage - so we revisit with updated information.

As interest grew in creating blended Bordeaux-style wines, the members sought to create a recognizable name associated with high-quality blended wines, instead of merely labelling them as "Red Table Wine" (or "White Table Wine") or giving them proprietary names unique to the winery.

In 1988, the Meritage Association hosted a contest to conceive of a name for these wines. They received over 6,000 submissions. Neil Edgar of Sacramento won by suggesting Meritage — a combination of the words merit and heritage (and which rhymes with the latter). This is an American word folks and as cool as you think it sounds rhyming it to sound like (garage) it is not pronounced or like Hermitage which is French. You couldn't expect a guy from Sacramento to come up with a French pronunciation.

BONUS: As a reward for winning this contest, Mr. Edgar was awarded two bottles of the first ten vintages of every wine licensed to use the Meritage brand.
I did the math – there are over 100 wines using the Meritage label so Neil is the proud recipent of over 2,000 fantastic bottles!

Meritage defined:

Red wine from Bordeaux is made with certain grape varieties, principally Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec. A red Meritage must be made from at least two of these grapes (or the less well known St. Macaire, Gros Verdot, and Carmenere), and no single varietal may comprise more than 90% of the blend.

White Meritage bears the same relationship to white Bordeaux as its red counterpart. It is a blend of at least two of the grapes Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon, and Sauvignon Vert.
Although not stipulated by the licensing agreement, the Meritage Association strongly recommends that wineries label only the blend that they consider to be their best as Meritage, and that they limit production of such wines to no more than 25,000 cases.

"Meritage" is a registered trademark and can only be used by wineries that agree to the Meritage Association's licensing agreement. This stipulates the types of blends that can be labelled "Meritage" (discussed above), also must pay a fee of $1.00 per case of wine produced, capped at $500.00 per vintage) and that they abide by wine labeling restrictions

Source: www.wikipedia.org/

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